The Gentleman and the Rogue (27 page)

“Your girl, sir. Only yours,” she whispered.

“Less than a girl. What are you, Ann?”

“Your little dog, sir.” She supplied her part of what appeared to be a familiar litany between them.

“That's right. Only a naughty little pup which must obey my every command or be punished.”

“Enough!” Alan snapped, breaking the spell the man's voice cast over Ann. She seemed to be visibly shrinking before his eyes. “You've got your proof. I have the girl here, and I'll trade her for Jem if you only open the door. I shall give you until the count of three. Then young Miss Cutler and I will bid you good night, and I will return to London with her. I have no reason to stay here any longer, and my carriage is just outside. One. Two…”

At last there was a sound of bolts drawing back. Alan hurriedly gave the hand signal
retreat
to Annie, and she almost stumbled up the stairs, tripping over Jem's coat in her rush to get away. Good. That would make the next part much easier.

“She's mine. I've made her mine.” The door was flung open. For a single heartbeat, Alan stared into the dark eyes and pale face of Mr. Schivvers. Then he stepped forward—and without a word, Alan thrust the knife he'd grabbed in the kitchen into Schivvers's body. He unerringly slid the blade between the ribs.

The man's dark eyes went wide. He blinked once and crumpled, toppling onto his side. Alan nearly stumbled over the still-gasping Schivvers when he saw the horror lying on the table. A naked, bleeding corpse. No, not a corpse. But so much blood. Jem's impossibly blue eyes stared out at him. He wasn't unconscious. Alan yanked the cloth from Jem's mouth.

“You're crying,” Jem said.

“Where are the keys?”

“Dunno. Kept my eyes closed when I could.” He was a mess. Blood dripping from nearly every part of his body. Lines and curves of blood. His hair was matted with the thick liquid.

Alan went back to Schivvers. He squatted, ran his hands over the blood-soaked clothes, and searched his pockets for keys to the shackles. “You've killed me,” the man rasped. A red bubble popped at the corner of his mouth.

Alan didn't answer.

“Damn you, Watleigh. You didn't have to kill me.”

Alan found a ring of keys in his waistcoat pocket and pulled it out, surprised to see his fingers slightly shook.

Schivvers was right; Alan hadn't needed to strike a lethal blow to contain the man. Fear and anger had directed his hand, which had been trained to kill.

“You're right,” he said at last. “I shouldn't have killed you. I should have made you suffer.”

But he wasn't going to lie awake nights and see the surgeon's blood pooling on the floor. He rose to his feet and looked at Jem stretched out before him. That was the image that would haunt him.

Alan tried different keys in the locks. Behind him Schivvers gave a hoarse, rasping cry. He gurgled and fell silent.

The lock on Jem's bleeding left hand clicked open. “Thank you, sir,” Jem whispered. “Is he dead?”

Alan didn't turn to look. “You are an idiot. A goddamned driveling idiot.” Alan kept his voice low, though inside he still howled and screamed. He went to work on the lock holding the other hand in place. “You are the greatest fucking fool I've ever encountered. I can't understand—I can't begin to imagine—why you would do something so half-cocked. Half-baked.”

“Half-cocked?” Jem gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, he was about to make me half-cocked. Half-balled.”

“Jem,” Alan began. “My God. Jem.” He couldn't say more. Perhaps never would, though he knew the truth at last. If Jem had died, every bit of light would have gone out of his life. He needed this man.

Both of them were bloody fools, Jem literally.

“You're still weeping, sir.”

He nodded. And for the very briefest of moments, he leaned over the supine figure and kissed an uncut spot on his cheek. “I am indeed,” he said.

Chapter Sixteen

Annie waited at the top of the stairs.

“We have to get her out of here,” Alan said. “Without waking the servants.”

“Melvin said they have strict orders to ignore any sounds from the basement. He did experiments on cats, Schivvers told them. An acceptable practice for a surgeon is how Burton explained it to him, but it made Melvin feel positively shivery, he told me.”

Alan found a large roll of sailcloth in the back of the room.

“The man must have wrapped up his victims in this. 'Tis his turn for the winding cloth,” said Jem.

“No,” said Alan. “We can't hide the evidence; we don't have time to clean up. We must simply go. I need to make sure you're going to be all right.”

Jem's clothes were nowhere to be found. Alan cut a length of cloth for Jem, who slowly eased into a sitting position. Alan carefully wrapped it around Jem's naked body. The cloth went red with his blood. Alan felt sick again.

Jem was more worried about Annie. “She shouldn't see me like this,” he whispered.

“We can't worry about that now. We must leave.”

They crept out of the house, Jem leaning heavily on Alan, Annie running ahead, looking over her shoulder even after they'd left the house behind.

The smell of all that blood made the horses nervous.

They climbed into the carriage carefully, and Annie sat between the men. She shrank away from them both but stared at Jem in the bright moonlight.

“I know I look a fright, Major,” Jem said. “But 'tisn't so bad.” He hoped not, anyway. He'd begun to shake and felt as if the world were spinning. The pain from all the cuts throbbed with every heartbeat.

Annie nodded solemnly, as if telling him she'd seen worse. She probably had.

“You understand that Mr. Schivvers is gone?” Alan asked. “He'll never be able to harm you again.”

They set off at a calm pace. No need to run like the wind and raise suspicion. After a long moment, she nodded again.

“Are you all right, Jem?” Alan asked again over the top of the girl's head.

“Fine, fine,” Jem lied. Again. He closed his eyes, but that was worse. When he opened them again, he lurched a little toward Annie, who drew his coat tighter around her.

The devil was gone, but his influence could be felt in all the stinging cuts on Jem's body and in the cringing, silent girl next to him. The cuts would heal, perhaps leaving some interesting scars—he'd be a match for the badger. The girl's wounds might be crippling.

“I might cast up my accounts,” Jem warned as the nausea grew. But he didn't, and they made it back to the inn, grim and silent and shocked—and unnoticed.

The innkeeper was there to usher them into the building and cast a suspicious eye at the staggering Jem, but Alan made an excuse concerning too much drink and a tavern fight. He also offered the man a large sum to earn his silence concerning the girl in their company, although he masked the bribe as an apology for disturbing the innkeeper so late at night.

Jem and Annie slowly made their way upstairs while Alan stayed behind to make certain the horses were taken care of by the sleepy hostler.

Up in the room, Annie stood unmoving in the middle of the floor, Jem's heavy coat sleeves reaching past the tips of her fingers. “You can sit down,” Jem said as he carefully stretched out on the bed. “Anywhere you like. Forgive me lying down in front of a lady, but I can't stand without falling over.”

She dropped to the ground. The poor thing was obviously exhausted. But now he understood. She would do nothing unless told to.

“Annie, you should lie down. On this bed. I won't touch you. On the pallet. Anywhere you wish. And you can take off me coat. Or leave it on, whatever you wish.”

She crawled doglike over to the pallet. Christ, as soon as he could, he would coax her out of moving in that fashion. It fair made him ill.

Jem held out his pillow. “You want this?” She shook her head.

When Alan came in, he went straight to the washstand and poured the waiting pitcher-load of water into the basin. “I should wash your cuts,” he told Jem.

“Naw. Get the bed all wet? And I'm afraid I ain't standing up again tonight, sir.”

Alan started over to the bed with the basin. He stopped and looked down at the floor. “What did you say, Major?”

Had the girl spoken? Jem's ears were buzzing, and he hadn't heard.

“It's all right. You're not in trouble, I promise. Just say it again.”

Now Jem heard her whisper. “Spirits. Drink.”

Jem gave a weak laugh. “Brandy is perfect. You saying I should drink a glass? I agree.”

She shook her head, solemn and scared.

“What should I do with the spirits?” Alan asked softly.

“Alcohol for washing. Mrs. Cutler used to say so. Hurts though,” she whispered.

“Very well.” Alan put down the basin and fetched the bottle of brandy from the mantelpiece.

As he leaned over Jem with one of his own linen shirts soaked with brandy and dabbed at the slices on his face, arms, and chest, Jem muttered, “I know we're supposed to make the girl more confident, but wasting good drink? And, oh good God—gracious that hurts like a fu—” He clapped a hand over his mouth and let off a series of muffled shouts into it.

Alan worked steadily, pressing the soaked cloth to Jem's cuts. “Mrs. Cutler was a good nurse, and I would be foolish to ignore her advice,” he said in a loud voice. He finished the last stinging cut on Jem's leg. He wrapped two long white cloths around his arm and another around his leg. Jem suspected they were Alan's cravats, but he was still feeling fuzzy from the pain of that washing.

“Only a few cuts are still bleeding, Jem. And none are spurting blood. You might need stitches on them. I think we should keep the rest uncovered.”

Alan straightened and looked at Annie. “When I knew you in Spain, you called your mother mum. Why do you now call her Mrs. Cutler?”

“He says to.” No surprise there—and certainly no need to ask who
he
was.

“Did he tell you why?”

“He is my family. My mother and father and everything I need,” she recited and then fell silent. In a nearly inaudible whisper, she added, “But he isn't. He
wasn't
.”

And for the first time, Jem felt they had a chance at pulling her back entirely.

“He wasn't,” Alan agreed. “He's nothing now. We'll take care of you, and you know he'll never come near you again.”

They should just say the bastard's dead. Tell her the entire truth. Likely she heard the commotion and saw the blood. For some reason Alan hadn't said the words yet, and Jem wondered why. Could he seriously believe there was a breath of life left in the surgeon? Jem knew a corpse when he saw one. Mr. Schivvers was no longer among the living. He was cutting off the limbs of the demons in hell.

Alan moved about the room, tidying, doing Jem's job again. Annie lay curled in a tight ball, watching his every move. When Alan came near her, she flinched and seemed to hold her breath.

Jem, who'd been lying on his back, trying to decide what hurt more, his chest or his arm, grew impatient at last. “Annie. If you're not sleepy, lass, might I have a word? Come here.”

She crawled over to the bed. He patted the mattress next to him. “Just to sit for a second. And listen.” She sat, her hands folded in her lap.

Alan turned his attention to him, frowning. Jem cleared his throat and tried to think of how to say what needed to be said. If someone laid out the rules and kept to them, she'd be better. She needed rules.

He'd use a swell's language. “I expect you won't believe me entirely, and that's all right. But you pay attention, don't you?”

She nodded.

Jem said, “No one is going to hit you.” He directed a defiant look at Alan, who stared steadily back. “I swear not to touch you, less it's a matter of danger. I swear on my life not to touch you without your permission. And Captain will make the promise too. Captain?”

Alan nodded.

“Swear,” Jem said fiercely.

Thank goodness Alan didn't go into some sort of tirade about being ordered about by his valet. He spoke solemnly. “I swear not to touch Miss Annie Cutler without her permission unless she is in danger.”

“No pain of any kind,” Jem said, recalling pinches and cuts. “Nothing.”

“No pain of any kind,” Alan said. And he smiled at Jem.

Annie sat perfectly still, studying each cut up and down Jem's arm. He pulled the sheet up to his neck, wincing as the cloth touched his ravaged skin. He went on. “And yelling at you, Annie? We won't, will we sir?”

“Not unless there's danger,” Alan said.

“Eventually we might let loose with a yelp or two. Likely if you do something wrong after being told not to. You remember your mum doing that, aye? Your mum losing her patience? But no yelling for breaking rules you don't know. Nothing you don't expect. But never hitting. No pain ever again. Right, Captain? I swear it.”

“We both swear it. Nor will we allow anyone else to hurt you.” Again Alan's eyes met Jem's, and something strong passed between them. He was making an oath to her and to him as well. There was the usual intense yearning in that gaze, along with more. So much more. There was a clarity, as if a light shone brightly in the dark depths of his eyes, and all the fears and doubts that had plagued the man were dispelled.

Jem could almost see the change in Alan and was half-afraid he'd imagined it. A trick of candle and firelight along with an acute awareness of all the pain. But just in case, he said, “And I swear it too, Captain. Sir Alan Watleigh. No one will hurt you. Not so long as there's breath in my body.”

Alan didn't break their joined gazes for several long heartbeats. Then he leaned down to pick up the basin he'd left on the floor. “Good night, Annie. Er, you might want to lie down again.” His voice rasped. As if he held back tears.

She crept back to her pallet. Jem closed his eyes.

“We should all sleep,” Alan said, normal again. He took off a coverlet and wrapped it around himself. Holy Christ, he lay on the floor.

“No, sir. You should have the bed, and—”

“Good night, Jem.” Now that was right and good. He was back to firm Sir Alan again, brooking no nonsense from his valet. “Sleep well, both of you.” And the room soon filled with the soft sound of breathing.